[AM] At the time of its admission into the Union, Missouri contained only ten or eleven thousand slaves, which might have been easily sold in the neighbouring slave-holding States.
[AN] Deducting those in the Northern States.
[AO] The indemnity allowed to the owners amounts to about 125 dollars a head, which for 2,500,000, the present number in the United States, would amount to about 312 millions.
[AP] Some are surprised, that the slave and the free black are more severely dealt with by the laws of the Southern States, than by those of a colony belonging to an absolute monarchy, Cuba for instance, and that, for example, it should be prohibited, under pain of fine and imprisonment, to teach them to read or write. The contrary would be much more surprising. In a country where there is perfect liberty for the free class, it would be impossible to sustain slavery unless by the severest legislation. If the slave should read in your constitutions and bills of right, "that all men are born free and equal," how can it be that he would not be in a standing conspiracy against you? It is just to observe that, in the United States, the slaves, though intellectually and morally degraded, are humanely treated in a physical point of view. They are less severely tasked, better fed, and better taken care of, than most of the peasants of Europe. Their rapid increase attests their easy condition.
[LETTER XIV.]
THE ELECTIONS.
New York, Nov. 11, 1834.
The autumnal elections have taken place in most of the States, and have resulted favourably to the democratic party and the President. Last April the mayor of New York, who is a Jackson man, was chosen by the small majority of 181 votes out of 35,147, and the Opposition prevailed in the Common Council. The majority in favour of General Jackson is now 2,400; several causes have contributed to produce this result.
The name of the Bank, whose cause is closely connected with that of the Opposition, sounds more and more odious to the ears of the multitude; this is unjust, but it is, nevertheless, true, and some of the late measures of the Bank have redoubled the animosity of the democratical party towards it. It refused to show its books to the committee of inquiry appointed by the House of Representatives, unless in the presence of the officers of the Bank, and its enemies have persuaded the multitude, that the Monster dared not reveal the secrets of its den to the representatives of the people.[AQ] The Bank persists, conformably to the custom of merchants, in demanding damages on account of the protest by the French government of the bill of exchange sold to the Bank by the Administration, and has withheld the dividends due the United States on their stock. The purpose is merely, say the officers of the Bank, to bring the question of damages before the proper tribunal. But the democratic party takes this act as the text for its tirades against the Bank. "Behold it," they say, "setting itself above the laws, taking the execution of justice into its own hands, and under false pretences, laying hold of the public money." In both these cases it is quite possible that the right was wholly on the side of the Bank, but appearances are against it, and nothing can be more injurious to it in a country governed by universal suffrage. Many of its friends, admitting that the course of the Bank has been strictly legal, would have preferred that a more prudent policy had been adopted, both for the interest of the Bank itself and of the Opposition.